Analysis: The probability of the U.S. and Iran reaching a consensus on their core demands is not low

ME News message. On April 12 (UTC+8), CITIC Securities said that based on the U.S.’s core demands, if Iran can abandon uranium enrichment, it will become the most core wartime achievement for the U.S., and also the biggest “accomplishment” that Trump can use to appease domestic opinion. This round of conflict has already had substantial negative impacts on the mid-term elections, so it needs to extricate itself as early as possible.

Since the Iranian Islamic Revolution, the U.S. has lost the right to control Iran’s nuclear capabilities. In the past decades, successive U.S. presidents have failed to resolve this issue, severely undermining America’s Middle East strategy. Compared with the enormous role of Iran’s “nuclear abandonment” achievements in political publicity, the indirect link between oil prices and inflation may have less impact on elections; therefore, the Trump administration may be willing to compromise on issues such as control of the Strait of Hormuz.

From the perspective of Iran’s core demands, this war has proven that blockading the strait and threatening Middle Eastern infrastructure are extremely important balancing chips—indeed, they are even more destructive and flexible than nuclear-weapon threats. Compared with nuclear weapons that are extremely costly and difficult to control their scale, blocking the strait and striking infrastructure only require low-cost drones, which can have a significant impact on the U.S. and the global economy, thereby forming Iran’s balancing tool against the U.S. The fact that both Iran and the U.S. have repeatedly stopped short at their red lines near large-scale infrastructure destruction also means that the probability of the war escalating to an extreme level is not high, and the likelihood of extreme oil prices, a severe recession, or stagflation is decreasing.

( Jin10 ) (Source: ODAILY)